Why does the US fear Hugo Chavez so?

In the secret history of the United States, we have waged an unrelenting war against socialism in our own hemisphere not because we fear communism, but because we crave cheap markets. The little island of Cuba has lived under suffocating blockades ever since it chased the predatory capitalists off the island. We can truthfully say that Castro has been a dictator, but we will never know how he would have ruled if we had not attempted continual assassinations and overthrows of their government from the very start.

FAIR is a group that studies media bias. What follows is a look at how the US corporate media vilifies Hugo Chavez. For example, CNN’s David Frum compared Chavez to the evil Joker in Batman movies. According to the images presented by our corporate press, Chavez is a dictator. We do not seem to count the fact that he has been elected several times, which makes the word “dictator” in accurate to say the least. What is also left out of the official picture is the fact that our own nation has sought to secretly and illegally depose Chavez.

The US press often reports that Chavez has devastated Venezuela’s economy. But this report by FAIR reveals that Chavez, by nationalizing the oil nation’s oil production, has increased the purchasing power of the average Venezuelan two and a half times. What has been devastated is the grip of US corporations over the lives of Venezuelans. The US press does not seem to care when dictators who are friendly to the US let their people starve, so long as their markets are open to our corporations. But when Chavez channels the nation’s resources to the poorest of the poor, our press accuses him of “massive government vote buying.” The CNN article cites such sinister plots as a program,”that aims to build 200,000 housing units for Venezuela’s poor.”